So Many Names, There Is

Particularly When I Thought Of Myself As A Wallace Stevens Acolyte, I Wrote Very Difficult Poetry And I Was Really Guilty Of Not Knowing What I Was Talking About. I Was Going For A Kind Of Clever Verbal Effect. I Was Trying To Sound Linguistically Or Verbally Interesting. I Had A Sense, I Guess, From Just Reading A Lot Of Poetry Of How A Poem Would Start And How It Would End But Really I Didn't Know What I Was Doing. It Had Very Little Connection To My Life.

There Are Just Long Gaps Where I Can't Find A Point Of Insertion, I Can't Find A Good Opening Line, I Can't Find A Mood That I Want To Write Into. But Once I Do, Once A Line Falls Out Of The Air, Or I Get A Little Inkling Of A Subject And I Recognize That, It's Like The Sense That A Game Has Started.

The Pen Is An Instrument Of Discovery Rather Than Just A Recording Implement. If You Write A Letter Of Resignation Or Something With An Agenda, You're Simply Using A Pen To Record What You Have Thought Out.

I Just Think That The World Of Workshops - I've Written A Poem That Is A Parody Of Workshop Talk, I've Written A Poem That Is A Kind Of Parody Of A Garrulous Poet At A Poetry Reading Who Spends An Inordinate Amount Of Time Explaining The Poem Before Reading It, I've Written A Number Of Satirical Poems About Other Poets.

Poetry Is My Cheap Means Of Transportation, By The End Of The Poem The Reader Should Be In A Different Place From Where He Started. I Would Like Him To Be Slightly Disoriented At The End, Like I Drove Him Outside Of Town At Night And Dropped Him Off In A Cornfield.